Hugh Christopher Willmott

City University and Cardiff University

We explore the significance of social ontology and its capacity to inform the specification of organizational status, architecture and capacities. We consider how different conceptions of social ontology are critical for explicating a range of epistemological and socio-economic questions concerning organizations and develop a research agenda orient...

What is the role of conflict in bringing about radical change? Taking the case of the gig economy, we study the conditions of possibility for fairer alternative ways of organising to emerge, and the relative impeding forces. Currently, some commentators underscore the sense of freedom of working as a self-employed contractor; others focus on its ne...

This is an appendix for the article Not "from the editors" published in Organization. The Appendix is also available on the Organization website.

This is an appendix for the article Not "from the editors" published in Organization. The Appendix is also available on the Organization website.

The standing and progress of science depends upon confidence in the evaluation of knowledge claims. This essay affirms the value of peer review as a ‘gold standard’ but argues that its efficacy for scientific progress is, on balance, diminished by blinding. It reflects critically upon the anomaly between an ethos of openness that is widely held to...

The paper reflects on the experience of preparing a ‘From the Editors’ (FTE) editorial for The Academy of Management Review that went through a process of editorial evaluation prior to its rejection. It provides a detailed example of an encounter between orthodox and heterodox forms of scholarship, illuminating their distinctive value-orientations...

This Special Issue revisits the classic question of comparative corporate governance research, namely whether national corporate governance systems are converging. More specifically, it focuses on several 'convergence vectors' which comprise the political, legal, economic and social arrangements that influence or drive the international trajectorie...

I am pleased to take up the invitation to prepare a brief essay that speaks to ‘the importance of studying research methodology’. First, I set out what I mean by methodology, arguing that its sense is contingent upon the tradition in which it is framed. Second, I consider how methodology is framed within the tradition of critical social science. An...

The current model of corporate governance needs reform. There is mounting evidence that the practices of shareholder primacy drive company directors and executives to adopt the same short time horizon as financial markets. Pressure to meet the demands of the financial markets drives stock buybacks, excessive dividends and a failure to invest in pro...

This article explores ‘research-as-craft’ as a sensitizing concept for disclosing the presence of ethics and politics, as well as embodiment and imagination, in the doing and representation of scientific activity. Routinely unnoticed, marginalized or suppressed in methodology sections of articles and methodology textbooks, research-as-craft gesture...

We engage with the convergence/divergence debate in the comparative study of corporate governance by commending a nuanced formulation of the convergence thesis. Directing attention to the precarious constitution and adoption of knowledge claims about corporate status and architecture in the field of corporate governance we suggest that the study of...

Numerous scandals have shown that the UK has an ineffective regulatory architecture populated by overlapping, uncoordinated and unaccountable bodies. This has resulted in duplication, waste and obfuscation as matters get shunted around from regulator to another. The UK has 41 regulators for the financial sector alone and at least 14 dealing with ac...

The UK auditing industry is dysfunctional and in disarray. It is dominated by the big four accounting firms and there is little choice and competition at the top-end of the market. The industry is routinely mired in scandals and audit quality is low. Auditors lack independence, enjoy too many liability concessions and have weak and ineffective regu...

This policy paper was submitted to the UK Labour Party and puts forward proposals to check soarway executive pay and secure a more equitable distribution of income. It contains twenty proposals for empowerment of employees and consumers, greater public information and mechanisms that have teeth.

This review was commissioned by the Shadow Business Secretary, Rebecca Long-Bailey and Shadow Chancellor of the Exchequer, John McDonnell.

The idea that corporations exist solely for the beneit of their shareholders has been termed ‘one of the fundamental fault lines of our economic model’ (Purpose of the Corporation Project, 2015). The ‘fault’ with shareholder primacy thinking is registered in broad evidence that the dominant corporate governance framework encourages excessive short-...

Based on an interview with academic-activist Professor Anu Muhammad, this edited transcript illuminates the corporatization of nongovernmental organizations, with specific reference to perpetuating the negative effects of neoliberal microcredit practices in developing countries. It focuses upon how such corporatization is contributing to corruption...

In “Beyond Constraining and Enabling: Toward New Microfoundations in Institutional Theory” Professor Cardinale (2018) seeks to expose and correct “shortcomings” (p.133) in institutional theory’s conceptualization of structure, agency and their relationship. To this end, he theorizes the “different mechanism[s] through which actors are embedded in s...

This article locates the reorganization of work relations in the apparel sector in Pakistan, after the end of the Multi-Fibre Arrangement (MFA) quota regime, within the context of a global production network (GPN). We examine the role of a network of corporate, state, multilateral and civil society actors who serve as intermediaries in GPN governan...

This paper locates the reorganization of work relations in the apparel sector in Pakistan, after the end of the Multi-Fibre Arrangement quota regime, within the context of a global production network (GPN). We examine the role of a network of corporate, state, multilateral and civil society actors who serve as intermediaries in GPN governance. Thes...

In an assessment of Lawson's social ontological analysis of the modern corporation, we consider what is marginalized: the significance of the status and the effects of the separate legal entity (SLE). The SLE is conceived as a specific type of construct that is ascribed particular properties through its stabilization within and between different (l...

‘Management’ - as practiced in modern corporations as well as the social position ascribed to its exponents - is today comparatively well established and institutionalized. For Berle and Means, “[m]anagement” may be defined as that body of men who, in law, have formally assumed the duties of exercising domination over the corporate business and ass...

This paper analyses the genre of ‘methodology-as-technique’, which we suggest provides the underpinning logic for a particular conception of scientific rigour that is increasingly regarded as normal in globalized management research. Based on a qualitative interview study of management researchers in the peripheral context of India, we associate th...

Corporations play a central role in modern economies. Certain beliefs about corporations and corporate law are widely held and relied upon by business experts, the financial press, and economists who study the firm. Unfortunately, some of these widely-held beliefs are mistaken. This has led to numerous common errors in the way corporate law concept...

The report examines the shortcomings of Her Majesty's Revenues and Customs (HMRC), the UK's tax collection and enforcement authority, and recommends reforms. It finds that HMRC lacks adequate resources and provides poor service to taxpayers. It is too close to big business and lacks adequate public accountability to be an effective enforcer of tax...

PurposeFrom a perspective of ‘critical performativity’, John Lewis is of special interest since it is celebrated as a successful organization and heralded as an alternative to more typical forms of capitalist enterprise. Methodology/approachOur analysis uses secondary empirical material (e.g. JLP documents in the public domain, histories of John Le...

‘Management’ is widely and deeply embedded in ‘corporations’. Yet in many studies of management and organization, the corporation is an influential but shadowy and largely unaccounted-for presence: rarely is the modern, capitalist corporation thematized. This article contributes to remedying this omission by considering the corporation as a product...

We identify limits of ‘reflexive governance’ by examining the UK Code of Corporate Governance that is celebrated for its ‘reflexivity’. By placing the historical genesis of the Code within its politico-economic context, it is shown how its scope and penetration is impeded by a shallow, ‘single loop’ of reflexivity. Legitimized by agency theory, the...

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to indicate that managers responsible for decision making often have a limited appreciation of strategic shifts between codification and personalization of knowledge in different operational environments. This study is motivated by a concern to illuminate the influence of diverse business environments in the s...

The rise of modern corporations has been accompanied by an expansion of salaried executives who have replaced owner-managers. With this expansion, the new class of managers/executives came to regard themselves as stewards of large and complex corporations, and not principally or exclusively as agents for the owners. Emerging as a self- styled ‘prof...

Knowledge as a valuable asset of organizations is increasingly incorporated into thinking about strategy. Studies of knowledge management (KM) suggest that executives engaged in decision making often have a slender understanding of the strategic significance of knowledge. When addressing the challenge of explicating and designing a knowledge strate...

We address the centrality of affect in structuring social practices, including those of organizing and managing. Social practices, it is argued, are contingent upon actors’ affectively charged involvement in immanent, yet indeterminate social relations. To understand this generative involvement, we commend a temporally-sensitive, critically-oriente...

Drawing on the ‘logics approach’ to advance critical policy studies, we contribute to our understanding of the banking reform process in the wake of the financial crisis. We focus on the political and ideological dimensions of this process, paying particular attention to the way the narrow character of associated debates is produced and maintained....

The paper adopts an organizational perspective to explore the conditions of possibility of the recent re-emergence of overt class-based discourse on one hand, epitomized by the 'We are the 99%' movement, and the rise on the other hand of a populist, nativist and sometimes overtly fascist right. It is argued that these phenomena, reflecting the incr...

As the journal for 'critical reflexive scholarship on organization and learning', a central concern of Management Learning is to develop understandings of how issues of power and ideology shape processes and practices of knowledge creation and learning. This Virtual Special Issue features six key articles that we consider to be emblematic of this k...

This symposium is a critical assessment of how globalization has turned production, service delivery and governance into the private domain of non-state actors. Some of the means through which this is achieved are analyzed in this symposium and they include global production networks, the political corporate social responsibility of multinational c...

This paper addresses the theme of ‘the power of words’ by focusing on the rhetorical strategies that surround the reform of the banking sector in the UK. In particular, we argue that the psychoanalytic category of fantasy is central to developing a full understanding of political rhetorics as well as the challenges and opportunities for structural...

The relationship between organization and management theory (OMT) and critical management studies (CMS) has been limitedly developed. It has been widely acknowledged that following its early proliferation in the study of organizations, power swiftly fell out of favor for numerous reasons, including the incorporation of organization theory into busi...

Abstract‘Management’ is widely and deeply embedded in ‘corporations’. Yet in many studies of management and organization the corporation is an influential but shadowy and largely unaccountable presence. Rarely is the modern, capitalist corporation thematized. This article contributes to remedying this omission by attending to how the corporation is...

The structures of ownership and governance at John Lewis, a major UK employee-owned retailer, have been commended by those who wish to recuperate capitalism and by those who seek to transform it. From a perspective of critical performativity', John Lewis is of special interest since it is celebrated as a successful organization and heralded as an a...

We examine the dynamics of identity formation in organizations, with a particular focus on the development of antipathies and deadlocks, by engaging a well-regarded study of identity in organizations. By revisiting this study through the lens of a social theory of hegemony (STH), we show how this theory can bring fresh insights to studies of identi...

Theory building is conditioned by three registers – the ontological (reality), the epistemological (knowledge) and the ethical (values). The significance of the first two is widely acknowledged. But the third register tends to be overlooked, especially where a positive/normative dichotomy is assumed. Post-positivist thinking problematizes this dich...

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The paper examines the cooperative ownership and governance structures of John Lewis, a major UK employee-owned retailer, to explore whether they are a model of `responsible capitalism’ or a departure from it. From a perspective of `critical performativity’, John Lewis is of special interest as it is celebrated as a successful organization that is...

Management learning has traditionally straddled the parallel universes of human resource development and management education, between which there has been little dialogue or research. The article explores their relationship both conceptually and through a pedagogic example. It is noted how key elements of learning in organizations, such as trainin...

Prelims Vol_I.indd 1 10/13/2014 6:48:55 PM The SAGE Fundamentals of Applied Research (FAR) series brings together the essential and forward thinking articles on doing research in applied contexts with or for specific groups from the foremost publications and edited by established names in the field. Volumes showcase methodological innovations, key...

Obra en que se ofrece una perspectiva novedosa de la administración: amplia, porque la teoría y la práctica administrativa son examinadas en relación con el surgimiento de una moderna sociedad capitalista; crítica, porque se revisan las teorías administrativas, más que asumirlas. Contenido: Introducción de la teoría crítica a la administración; Esp...

In "You're Still the Same: Why Theories of Power Hold Over Time and Across Contexts," Jeffrey Pfeffer argues that one consequence of pursuing the "new" is a neglect of politics and "theories of power" that are symptomatic of a lack of scientific progress in management research. I agree that politics is an omnipresent feature of organization(s) and...

Purpose – The paper aims to examine the involvement of global accountancy firms in devising and selling tax avoidance schemes euphemistically marketed as “tax planning”. Design/methodology/approach – The study draws upon a range of secondary sources, including legal cases and government reports, to demonstrate how “tax planning” involves “wilful b...

PurposeTo consider Critical Management Studies as a social movement. Design/methodology/approachThe purpose is fulfilled by reflecting upon the history of Critical Management Studies by reference to social movement theory, institutional theory and the social theory of hegemony. FindingsCritical Management Studies is plausibly understood as a social...

This paper contributes to the development of a critical understanding of strategic management. We provide a brief outline of strategic management as it is conventionally taught and practiced, pointing to several avenues for developing critical approaches. In the broadest sense, a critical perspective stands outside of the managerialist orientation...

The article critically examines how work is shaped by performance measures. Its specific focus is upon the use of journal lists, rather than the detail of their construction, in conditioning the research activity of academics. It is argued that an effect of the ‘one size fits all’ logic of journal lists is to endorse and cultivate a research monocu...

This article reflects upon Willmott's 1993 article (‘Strength is ignorance; slavery is freedom: managing culture in modern organizations’) by revisiting the idea of ‘Corporate Culturism’ and its relevance for contemporary developments in management and organization, including higher education. It incorporates a commentary on how 1984 and ‘Strength...

This paper contributes to the development of a practice-based understanding of ethics. Ethics is here conceived as a critical practice of questioning and problematizing moral orders and moral rules-in-use in which subjects (re)define their relations to self and others. Situating this conception of ethics in the context of practice theory, we draw u...

Management learning has traditionally straddled the parallel universes of human resource development and management education, between which there has been little dialogue or research. The article explores their relationship both conceptually and through a pedagogic example. It is noted how key elements of learning in organizations, such as trainin...

‘Management’ is widely and deeply embedded in ‘corporations’. Yet in many studies of management and organization the corporation is an influential but shadowy and largely unaccountable presence. Rarely is the modern, capitalist corporation thematized. This article contributes to remedying this omission by attending to how the corporation is a produ...

It is a relatively common assertion today that globalization is leading to a change in the role of the corporation. While globalization exposes the limited ability of nation-states to develop effective systems of global regulation, concurrently, we witness privatization of areas that formerly were the responsibility of the state. The combination of...

This is a commentary on Hodgkinson and Starkey's (British Journal of Management, 22 (2011), pp. 355–369) proposal to reframe the relevance of business and management research by combining design science with critical realism. Their proposal is welcomed for its advocacy of a ‘social usefulness’ agenda and for commending the insights of the social sc...

Este articulo tiene como objetivo examinar la influencia de la desregulacion neoliberal en el brote de desmutualizaciones que tuvieron lugar en los anos noventa. Explora hasta que punto la desmutualizacion de dos sociedades de credito o cajas de ahorros - Northern Rock y Bradford & Bingley- y su consiguiente desaparicion, en la estela de la contrac...

Why has the financial crisis not led to more radical public contestation and political reforms? In investigating the muted response to the crisis so far, the paper highlights the significance of ideological fantasy for appreciating the interpenetration of economy and society. We interpret this muted response to the crisis in terms of a ‘cooling out...